Executive Summary

The report is made to study the problems faced by Sunnyvale hotel and to
come up with recommendations to bring it back in the game.
Problem faced by sales, food and beverage, engineering and reservations
departments have been covered. The report tracks the problems, makes
recommendations to departments, suggest actions to be taken if the
departments dont seem to be coming together and what can be done to
show the owner that the hotel is making progress.
The biggest problem in the organisation is lack of communication and
secondary problem is working only for departments not the hotel. The
management needs to communicate with all departments and should work in
the same direction to make the hotel successful rather than departments.

Table of Contents

Contents
Problems faced due to lack of communication...........................................................3
Recommendations to the department heads.............................................................4
Actions to be taken if department heads dont work together...................................6
Showing the owner that the resort is getting better...................................................6
Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 8

Problems faced due to lack of communication

The fact that the owner and the initial manager barely had any
communication as a result the owner was completely clueless to an extent as
to why the resort was making losses. Thus proper planning was never laid
with respect to intra - department communication. Thereby every employee
laid more focus on achieving departmental targets rather than achieving the
resort targets collectively. This leads to a communication barrier among the
various departments of Sunnyvale Resort.
The following problems were incurred by various departments due to poor
communications among the executive staff.
The sales director would over book the resort and would not provide
complete statistics and figures about the arrival of the guests to the
Reservation Manager Teresa Mansfield. Due to lack of communication
between the two, the reservation manager is unaware as to how many rooms
have been sold by the sales manager. Under booking is another problem
faced by the reservation manager due to lack of communication between the
guests, reservation team and the sales team. In the quest of satisfying the
guests the sales director also used the rooms and suites allocated to the
reservation team. Thereby leaving the reservation team with less desirable
room that was expected to be sold at premium. Without prior consultation
with the reservation team the sales director took budgetary actions and sold
the rooms at $120 rather than $150.The actions taken by various
departments without proper communication among them resulted in the
reservation team of not have a count of the rooms that were available for
sales and those that were not. It resulted in setting up of unrealistic targets
for the reservation manager. This also led to the reservation team to sell less
desirable room at higher prices. Poor communication between the sales and
the reservation team resulted in unsatisfied guests, loss to revenue and
restriction in profits.
Poor communication among the employees led to the creation of an
assumption that the reservation manager was always upset with certain
issues so she was less approachable, thereby creating a communication
barrier. It was also noted that the Executive Housekeeper Ruths standards of
cleaning were not up to the mark and had also stopped attending staff
meetings. There by avoiding communication and discussing the solutions to
the issues faced by the resort. Thus assumptions and not being actively

involved staff meetings also affects the communication among the

departments thereby causing problems.
Improper Planning and lack of communication created a disruption in the
check in and check out time, thereby leaving no time for the housekeepers
to set the room for the next guest. In case they are preparing the room, due
to irregularities in check in and check out time VIP guests end up standing in
the lobby waiting for their rooms to be prepared. To tackle the VIP guest
issue, the executive housekeeper pulls room attendants of their regular
rooms so that they can hurry though the suites and get them ready. Later
when the regular rooms were prepared the guests considered it as an
inconvenience .Ruth accepts that she forgets to inform the concerned
departments about actions to be taken, as a result the rooms are never
ready to the standards promised. The irregular check in and check out timing
also affect engineering activities in the resort. Thus lack of communication in
this scenario created major problems to the housekeeping team as their
services could not be provided at optimum level thereby leaving a bad first
impression or unhappy guests finally resulting into reduced earnings.
Engineering was required all over the resort. The room keeping attendants
never really had an answer for the shabby state of the resort. They thereby
asked the executive housekeeper to which she said it was the Chief Engineer
who never gave her an appropriate answer as to why the rooms were not
ready with respect to engineering work .Bob who was providing engineering
services since 11 years admits the fact that he did not have much
conversation with other departments .He states that lack of communication,
poor planning along with poor organizing skills led to poor execution of
engineering work thereby resulting in the rooms not being prepared on time .
Thus lack of communication also affected the engineering department there
by affecting the reputation of the resort.
As complaints were being received from the guest about the F&B
department, major F&B functions were handed over to a third party. The
resort largely started depending on the third party for its restaurant sales
thereby depriving the new F&B director an opportunity to prove himself in
increasing the in-house restaurant sales .The reason for this was due to the
poor performance of the ex. F&B director the sales director made a
perception that the F&B was not up to the resort standards. Lack of
communication deprived Jon from an opportunity to prove himself and
enable the resort to increase its in-house F&B earning and largely affecting
food sales.

Hence poor communication among the executive staffs not only reduced the
revenue & profits of Sunnyvale Resorts but it also led to a loss of its star
making it a 3 star property .Thus lack of communication within the
organization lead to confusion, poor service and dis satisfied customers that
acted as a great problem to various departments examples: sales,
reservation, housekeeping, F&B, engineering etc.

Recommendations to the department heads

Chief Engineer- The engineering department should get rid of all the
imperfections of the property such as leaky showerheads, painting walls
which require urgent attention i.e. the things which are not acceptable in a
star hotel and cant be avoided. A list of such things should be made
immediately and be taken care off.
The basic engineering of the hotel needs to be reviewed and actions need to
be taken straightaway. This includes electrical, plumbing and HVAC system
etc.
If the basics are not working well then there will be no maintenance but only
complaint solving.
Sales Manager- The communication between sales and other departments is
very necessary because sales department can actually help all the other
departments in increasing sales.
All the Food and beverage business has to stay within the hotel.
The blocking of rooms for groups should be done with consent of
reservations and dont oversell without prior intimation or block more rooms
than required.
The type of clientele brought to the hotel needs to be improved.

Housekeeper- The cleaning standards are not what they used to be so they
have to reinforced brought to the level of spick and span rooms.
Train and motivate staff for better performance.
All the executive meetings have to be attended no matter how busy you are.

Conduct internal meetings to come up with an action plan for better

housekeeping.
Reservations manager- The things that have happened in the past have to
be left in the past and new things are to be done without any anger from
past incidents.
It needs to be made sure that there is proper communication with sales and
other departments as well.
A plan for breakup of rooms to be sold needs to be devised.
The Average room rate needs to be increased gradually when the property
starts coming back on the track.
Food and beverage manager- The standards of service need immediate
improvements.
Staffs needs to be tightened up and told that the picnic is over.
The restaurants in the hotel need to come up with promotions to sell more
food and should not completely rely on sales for business

Actions to be taken if department heads dont work

together
Ken should first initiate teamwork among departments because there is a
very poor communication among staff and if after some time he finds that
team is not working together and sales are still going down than he as a
general manager should take steps which will initiate departments to work in
a team
Since the hotel is very old and many of the employees are old He should set
rules and regulations for each departments and new property management
system should be installed which will tie all departments together. As the
introduction of PMS will ensure that each department gets the update of
anything occurring in the hotel. Any department ranging from front office to
maintenance can post anything regarding the rooms. It is the best tool ken
can apply in the operations
Ken should try to make plans which will involve all the heads of different
departments to work together and achieve targets. This step may help in

making good communication and will further help in making teams which will
help in boosting sales
Even after this step if the coordination and communication does not get
better than ken should try the extreme step of sacking some employees who
will continue to perform worse as sales of room is the main concern.

Showing the owner that the resort is getting better

The main problems faced by the resort were excessive loss of money caused
by a major communication gap between the main departments of the resort.
Ken as a General Manager holds great responsibility and needs to raise
revenue in a short duration. He must set out a working plan with effective
instructions, rules and regulations to bring the departments together as a
team and remove the communication barrier.
He can bring about these changes in 90 days by:
1) Arranging an outdoor development meeting for all the employees of the
company which would emphasize on team work.
An outing would not only relax them and give them a break from their
daily schedule but also make their communication bond stronger,
reflecting their behavior at work and keeping their differences aside.
2) Holding a meeting with all the head of departments and setting specific
weekly plans for the next 90 days
This would combine the efforts and work done by different
departments for the company's interest and would serve the goals of
the company as a whole.
3) He should also put reservations to the sales and marketing department
Reservations would decrease misunderstandings and miscalculations,
improve efficiency and regularize rates.
4) A daily operating meeting should be held with the head of revenue center
to communicate operating business between different front line departments
and also arrange work for the next day.

Deciding next days work would give them a daily perspective.

Bringing about these changes would increase the morale of the employees
and help them to communicate better with each other. Different departments
would be able to work towards the benefit of the company with combined
team efforts, greater flexibility and increased innovation in a timely manner.
The owner of the company would be surprised to see the results with Ken's
one direction plan to increase revenue and improve the system of working by
helping the departments to work as a whole business settlement.

Conclusion
The main problems which the resort was facing were definitely the
communication between each department due to which they were losing
money.
Ken as a general manager is concerned to the increase in revenue by setting
a one direction plan. He should implement rules, regulations, instruction and
control in every department. Internal confusion can be solved by achieving
the resort goal as a team rather than every department concentrating on its
own departmental objectives. The entire team should aim at the success of
the Resort and not just its departmental success.
Following all the rules will help each department to work efficiently and
effectively.